- Last seen on Feb 8 6:16 AM. Member since February 14, 2006.
- I am a 45 year old man from New Jersey (United States)
- When I'm not writing, I'm translator .
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on I Cry by Tupac Shakur, on May 7, 2006If judged in a vacuum, Tupac Shakur's poetry is trite, self-indulgent, and imperfect metrically. But when his lyrics are compared to other rappers' living or dead, he emerges as a colossus of originality and prosodic knowledge. He at least tried, within his very limited compass, to strike a note of universality. It is obvious that he was acquainted with poetic greats and at least knew what poetry was suppose to sound like. And he undoubtedly had a striving to be better than his limitations. The other rappers are little better than the proverbial monkeys at a typewriter; once in a million years, they manage to strike a note of sense, soon engulfed and lost in their neverending output of nonsense. The vulgarity, profanity and pornographic content of 99% of rap songs would make their reproduction on this site impossible. Tupac Shakur is the rare exception. And, sadly, the state of education is such in this country, at this time, that few junior high-schoolers could write on Tupac Shakur's level. Hence, I think, their acclamation of him as a poetic genius.
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on A Sincere Man Am I (Verse I) by Jose Marti, on April 24, 2006
fuser479
The original of this poem, of course, is in Spanish. There are at least five other translations of which I am aware. This particular version comes from the first complete translation of Jose Marti's "Simple Verses," which I personally regard as the best. I may be biased, however, since I am the translator. Best regards, Manuel A. Tellechea -
on I'm So Frightfully Unhappy" (Verse XXXIII) by Jose Marti, on March 4, 2006This poem has the distinct flavor of the great English Cavalier poets. I am thinking in particular of Suckling, Marvel and Herrick. This should not surprise us in a Cuban poet, since it was José Martí who said that "The knowledge of many literatures is necessary in order to protect ourselves from the tyranny of one."
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on The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes, on February 26, 2006Moved by the overwhelmingly positive reaction of most readers to this poem, I read it again looking for everything good and commendable that I could find in it. Surely, it is a gripping narrative, and would be so in prose or poetry. Noyes does not dwell too much on the melodrama as minor poets might when treating such a theme. His poetic tecnique is in many respects admirable. And yet... There is something missing. Its many felicities obscure its shortcomings and almost excuse them. Still, the mawkish sentimentality and pitched emotion, clearly intended to grab the reader's attention, is perhaps overexploited. We see where he is going and he's definitely getting there; we only wish that he had as much confidence in his readers' ability to follow him without the overt cues.
